A Few Updates…

by Craig Hooper on October 23, 2019

Hey, I’m over on Forbes.com, talking about the need to secure the Alaskan EEZ and what may be another Navy attempt to avoid shock testing the USS Ford. Let me know what you think!

I am also wondering if the SECNAV is going to say anything interesting when he speaks–and takes moderated questions–from the safe confines of the Brookings Institution later on Wednesday. Maybe one day–maybe when all the Ford’s elevators are working–our SECNAV will take audience questions again.

{ 1 comment }

Don Bacon October 24, 2019 at 12:15 pm

comments on the web re: in lieu of shock trials
>Electromagnetic elevators work like Maglev trains. The magnets that move the elevator must always be in a fixed distance to the rail. That requires that the rails are kept very straight. But ships are rather flexible structures that flex and twist all the time. The idea to put electromagnetic rails into them is conceptually misguided. The Ford will need new elevators before it can be put to use.
>The weapons elevators are critical for a fighting ship, and they’re buried in the bowels of the monster where they’re at their deepest. If the systems don’t work out because of inherent instability of the bearing along the magnetic rail, once more the question arises what kind of mindset allows for such blunders. I suspect it’s got to do with a modular planning which is not regarded as an artificial and essentially incomplete dissection of a whole and its parts, but rather as a feasible pragmatic approach that can get a hold on any problem in the end.
>The LCS had reduced shock testing. In written testimony for the Senate Armed Services committee, Dr. Michael Gilmore, director of operational testing under the Secretary of Defense, said that the shock trials for the Independence and Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships were conducted at “reduced severity” due to concerns about the possibility of damage. “The Navy argued that the reduced severity approach was necessary because they lacked specific test data and a general understanding of how the non-Grade A systems . . . would respond to shock,” he wrote.

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